Question 7—How do you regard the European situation? Is there reason for expecting revolutionary events in the next few years?
Answer.—I think that elements of a profound capitalist crisis are growing and will continue to grow in Europe. Capitalism can be partly stabilised, it can can rationalise its production, it can temporarily stifle the working class. Capitalism is still able to do these things, but it will never return to that stability and that equilibrium which existed prior to the war and before the October Revolution. It will never again return to that stability and equilibrium. And that this is so can be seen from the fact that in the European countries, as well as in the colonial countries, which are the source of life of European capitalism, we see one revolutionary outburst after another. To-day we see a revolutionary outburst in Austria, to-morrow in England, and the day after somewhere in France or Germany, and then in China, Indonesia, India, etc. And what is Europe and its colonies? It is the centre of capitalism and its periphery. There is "unrest" in the centres of European capitalism. There is still greater "unrest" in its periphery. Conditions are ripening for new revolutionary events. I think that the clearest sign of the growing capitalist crisis, the clearest example of accumulated discontent and dissatisfaction among the working class, are the events connected with the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. What did the murder of two workers mean to the capitalist butchers? Have they not been murdering workers up to now in tens and hundreds, day in and day out? However, it sufficed to kill two workers, Sacco and Vanzetti, to set the working class all over the world in motion. What does that show? It indicates that the ground is getting too hot for capitalism. It indicates that conditions for new revolutionary events are ripening. The fact that the capitalists could succeed in sweeping back the first revolutionary wave, cannot by any means serve as a consolation for capitalism. The revolution against capitalism cannot rise in one continuous wave. It always develops in
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